The Fall of Facebook?: the Aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica Scandal

Facebook has been heavily profiled in the news lately, due to a massive questioning of how users’ data is handled, after political data firm Cambridge Analytica had access to over 50 million Facebook users’ private data, which was, in turn, able to use the data in their work for the Trump campaign in 2016. The backlash against Facebook has been substantial, with companies, celebrities, and everyday users leaving the site and speaking out against misinformation of privacy policies and misuse and mishandling of personal data. But how did we get here? This scandal is years in the making.

Background:

In 2010, Facebook launched the original version of their Open Graph API, allowing third-party app developers access to user data, following this, Facebook signed a decree with the US Federal Trade Commission, consenting that user data will not be shared without the user’s permission. In 2013, Cambridge Analytica is founded by UK strategy company Strategic Communication Laboratories Group as a US branch. The founding was orchestrated by Steve Bannon, and funded in part by the Mercer family, a Republican donor and Breitbart News backer.

How did Cambridge Analytica get the data?

Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan created a personality test (for Cambridge Analytica) similar to one created by the University’s Psychometric Quiz that had been gathering Facebook data since 2007, which the University refused to share with Cambridge Analytica. Through the new test created by Kogan, the data firm collected 270,000 people’s data with their knowledge, but against Facebook’s terms, the app also collects the information of those original 270,000 users’ friends without their consent or knowledge.  Cambridge Analytica now has over 50 million profiles in its database.

What is happening now?

Christopher Wylie, a former data scientist for Cambridge Analytica becomes a whistleblower on the company’s activity and triggered the investigations into Cambridge Analytica and Facebook from governments around the world.

There is a movement to delete Facebook, which has been joined by Cher, Will Ferrell, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton, and Tesla founder/CEO Elon Musk, as well as Musk having the SpaceX and Tesla Facebook pages deleted. There are multiple businesses canceling their ads, and removing themselves from the platform, and investors are nervous as stocks fall.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has since responded to public outcry, first saying that the main issues have already been resolved, and then in a second statement saying that he takes minimal issue with regulating Facebook more heavily. Zuckerberg has refused to testify about the privacy violation and misuse of content in front of UK MPs but will testify before Congress in the coming months.

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Bitcoin, Ethereum and More. An Introduction to Cryptocurrency

In 2008 a new currency was revealed to the world. Satoshi Nakamoto published a research paper that outlined a design for a digital currency called Bitcoin. The revelation solved one of the internet’s biggest questions, how to create digital money. Recently you may have seen that Bitcoin values are rising and falling at amazing rates, but why? And how do you take advantage of the madness and hype around cryptocurrency?

Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrency first and foremost are not the same as traditional currency, and perhaps the main difference is that it is not controlled by any central authority (banks, governments, etc.) Cryptocurrencies are “mined” by miners using computers and hardware to monitor and process transactions and the network the currency is based on. Miners receive the correlated digital currency in exchange for their work. Bitcoin maybe be one of the most well known of the available cryptocurrency types, but it isn’t the only one available, or the only one making the news. Litecoin, Ethereum, and Zcash are just some of the major contenders and each has its own privacy and trading capacities.

The buzz around cryptocurrency and specifically Bitcoin reached new heights last month as the price per “coin” surged to $19,500 USD. This made headlines as investors and other individuals raced to put money into the coins hoping to strike gold. However, last week, there was a sudden drop, with coins trading down to $9,200 USD (as of today the current value of one coin is $10,542.92 USD).  The drop was sudden and rattled those that had recently sunk money into the volatile market.

When the price surge occurred, Bitcoin’s electricity consumption hit a record high of 42.1 terawatt-hours. Energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions are a point of contention for many, as the rate of emissions rivals that of the entire country of New Zealand (roughly 20 million metric tons per year).

The process of grouping Bitcoin transactions and mining the transactions is to blame for the high use of electricity. Vox writer Umair Irfan says, “this process is like finding solutions to complicated math problems that become progressively more difficult. It’s a competitive process, with one miner receiving the award, currently 12.5 bitcoins, roughly every 10 minutes, so there’s a strong incentive to throw as much processor power — and thereby electricity — at the mining effort.” Or as Alex Hern of the Guardian says, the process is,  “a competition to waste the most electricity possible by doing pointless arithmetic quintillions of times a second.”

You do not have to mine your own cryptocurrency as it is relatively easy to purchase online, but buyer beware: the value does fluctuate, as discussed previously.  To get started investing in Bitcoin or Ethereum simply download the Coinbase app and create an account. Add an account to make payments from and tap ”Buy”. There are weekly purchasing limits based upon the type of payment account you set up, but you are now ready to start investing.

Once you purchase your chosen cryptocurrency you can either save it or spend it. Some of the things bitcoin is spent on include food delivery, socks, gaming, as well as being used as ante when placing online bets. The world of cryptocurrency is becoming much more accessible to the general public, and will thusly stay newsworthy as the interest in diversified finance and the community of cryptocurrency investors grows.

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Marketing and PR Fails of 2017

This year was filled with great moments in advertising and PR, from Honda’s “Yearbooks” and the all-new HoneyBaked Ham company’s “KellyBaked Ham” commercial to the Domino’s Pizza wedding registry and BrewDog’s puppy parental leave, there have been a lot of spot-on moments. But all of these hits don’t come without some misses, whether it’s just a flop or if there were bigger issues at hand in the PR department. These were some of the worst fails in marketing and PR this year.

Pepsi and Kendall Jenner

Pepsi’s “Live For Now” spot aired in April and was pulled shortly after, when it was received as ill thought out and in poor taste of the current social and political climate. The ad features Kendall Jenner abandoning a modeling gig to join a protest. Tensions begin to mount between police and protesters until miraculously, Jenner’s opening of a can of Pepsi eases the conflict.  The ad was so unliked that Wired claimed it “united the internet”.

Adidas Boston Marathon

After finishing the Boston Marathon, runners received an email from the sponsor of the race, athletic brand Adidas. The message read “Congrats, you survived the Boston Marathon!” The responses to this message were quick and harsh, as many wondered how the messages deeper meaning had not been thought through. If you recall, in 2013 three people were killed and over 260 were injured during a bombing at that year’s Boston marathon. Adidas released a statement officially apologizing for the email

Walker’s #WalkersWave selfie campaign

Automated Twitter campaigns sound like a great idea, until they aren’t. British company Walkers Crisps launched a campaign to bring attention to the brand by having Twitter users send in selfies to be featured in the #WalkersWave, with a chance to win Champions League tickets. The selfies that ended up being submitted were, frankly, less than ideal. From mass murderers to disgraced TV stars, the PR stunt that was intended to be lighthearted and fun backfired in a way that was in one word: incredible. Walers issued an apology and shut down the campaign shortly thereafter.

The Oscars mix up

Following the botched announcement of the winner of Miss Universe, no one would have expected the same thing to happen on the biggest night in Hollywood. At the end of the night, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway went onstage to present the award for best picture, and read the card with the results, one that stated “La La Land”. However, Beatty was handed the wrong envelope, and during the celebration of their win, the cast and crew were interrupted to announce that, “La La Land” was not, in fact, the winner, but the film “Moonlight” was. Mass confusion ensued, and PricewaterhouseCoopers the accounting firm that has overseen the Oscar ballots for 83 years issued an apology and launched an investigation into how the mistake was made.

United Airlines

2017 was rough for United Airlines, with multiple damaging PR situations including a violently removed passenger, overbooked flights and passenger dress code uproar. The United PR team and CEO Oscar Munoz have had lukewarm responses to all of the incidents. The non-apologies and disappointing initial responses caused United’s stock price to fall by half a billion dollars. Social media users spoke out about the airline’s policies and responses, and there didn’t seem to be a strategy to fix it, making this an even bigger PR disaster.

Dove

Dove has worked hard to align itself as a brand that is for everyone, especially with their “Real Beauty” campaign that has spanned a decade. But this year missed the mark in some pretty major ways, with the series called “Real Beauty Bottles” and an ad on Facebook that was immediately criticised as being racist. The bottles were an awkward misstep that meant to show inclusion and Twitter users ripped the campaign to shreds.  The ad for Dove’s body wash showing models removing a skin toned shirt to reveal another model was more recent, but since its release, the backlash surrounding it has caused Dove to issue an apology and pull the ad. You can read what one of the featured models thinks about the controversy here.

Fyre Festival

Who can forget the Fyre Festival? In April, the fallout from a failed blowout music festival in the Bahamas was astronomical. From lack of promised amenities to the infamous cheese sandwich, the festival that promised everything delivered nothing. Those who purchased tickets (with prices ranging from several thousand dollars up to $250,000 for deluxe packages) were either blocked from flying in or ended up stranded on the island. The organizers of the event have remained quiet, save for citing “unforeseen and extenuating circumstances” for the postponement of the event and promising free entry for next year to all of those who purchased tickets. There are currently multiple lawsuits filed against the event organizers which include accusations of negligence, fraud, failure to provide funds and breach of contract. Spin’s timeline of events outlines every misstep and incident from the very beginning.

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